The California Nebula. AKA. NGC 1499. About 1000 light years away.

This is my very first photo of a nebula. When I saw a preview of it from the ASIAir Pro app I was pretty floored. A week prior or so I was taking an image of a couple of galaxies and now I’m capturing  the California Nebula from my backyard. This whole new hobby I jumped into is pretty rad in my opinion. Overall, I have no regrets getting into astrophotography. It really is one cool hobby.

I showed the pic to my son who was 7 at the time. Without telling him what it was he says,” Oh cool! The California Nebula!.”

Kids are sponges for knowledge if you allow them to be. You just gotta keep feeding them.

I was able to capture the emission of the nebula with the help of the Optolong L-Enhance filter. It’s a dual band filter that helped in light pollution areas while allowing H-Alpha, H-Beta and Oxygen III emission lines to come through in the photo. I recently got it and was pretty psyched to see what I could capture.

I was originally trying to get my hands on the Optolong L-eXtreme but that was sold out everywhere. Damn Covid I suppose. I really did not want to wait another month or two for it to come in. I waited a month and half for all my gear to finally be fulfilled. So, I looked at the next filter on my list, the Optolong L-Enhance. Now, this was also sold out at all the usual telescope shops online except for one place, Agena Astro. No hesitation I pulled the trigger.